The largest Russian trade union centers supported the workers’ right to strike

Today FNPR Chairman Mikhail Shmakov and KTR President Boris Kravchenko signed a joint statement “The right to strike”. The General Council of International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) announced 18 of February 2015 a global day of action on the right to strike. FNPR and KTR, being ITUC affiliates, fully support this initiative.

The statement notes: “The right to strike is a fundamental right of workers along with the right to organise and to bargain collectively. Despite the orchestrated employers’ attack on this right globally and on the national level, this right still is a cornerstone of the modern system of labour relations.”

“For many decades the right to strike has been recognised by International Labour Organisation, it is enshrined in international legal framework as well as in legislation of developed countries with a stable economic development and robust political system,” emphasized in the text.

The statement notes that attempts to challenge the underlying right to strike on the international level come from those who brought the global economy into the deepest financial and economic crisis with their neoliberal recipes and experiments.

“This crisis threatens millions of workers with unemployment and poorer social stability,” emphasized in the statement of the leaders of national trade union centers. “We are convinced that it is only through coordinated action of organised workers, supported with fundamental labour rights, that multinational corporations’ greed and attempts to make workers pay for the crisis can be tamed.”

Union leaders said that the legislation of the Russian Federation generally stipulates the constitutional right of workers to strike: “It can be realised as a sound instrument to resolve collective labour disputes as well as in cases when the employer tends to avoid settlement procedures.”

However, the statement noted that the unions of the Russian Federation consistently promote the opportunities to realise this right in labour sphere, to ease up the procedures to announce the strike, to implement in national legislation ILO provisions on the right for trade unions to hold solidarity strikes, as well as strikes to oppose governments’ social and economic policies.

FNPR and KTR deem unacceptable the recent calls to revise the fundamental workers’ rights and are determined to fight such attacks off by all legal means available. “Hands off the right to strike,” the statement says.